


In Haste at Noon

by toujours_nigel



Category: Alexander Trilogy - Mary Renault
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-21
Updated: 2011-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-27 16:21:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/297747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A place with the perfect vase and the polished gem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Haste at Noon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alexcat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexcat/gifts).



Prince Oxathres, returned to the Companions after his sojourn home to see his brother avenged, had taken an immediate and violent liking to Hephaistion that gave nobody any trouble to decipher, and afforded Ptolemy hours of amusement to see their heads bent together. That the Queen Mother should want a better source of news than the dispatch wagon wending its slow way across Persia was no treacherous crime, and Oxathres had, at least, unerringly selected the man who would give him the truth as it best suited the King. The Prince seemed willing enough to hear stories of Greece, asking eager questions about their gods and customs and histories and even eager to spool out unending stories of Persia, trading story for story in some antique sense of honour. He proved in time an invaluable source of confirmation, when Persian methods better served them than Greek, and from the first a fount of stories of childhood as a young lord in Persia, before King Darius was dreamt of. He had in him beneath his court veneer much of the forthright soldier, and Hephaistion found to his surprise that he had made a fast friend where he had looked only to serve as diplomatic informant—one, too, who was willing to guide his Macedonian tongue through the blurred softness of Persian, and not laugh overmuch. His lessons, as he told Alexander, taking care to laugh, proceeded rather faster than Bagoas’, being littered much less with pleasing distractions. Then, too, Oxathres had the noble’s eye that had never been taught the boy—though one would have known, of course, even without confirmation, that he was of good stock, from his lovely bones—and a knowledge of court customs no Greek could attempt, even after a lifetime of studying, and of his own royal kin: to him an action of his brother’s, or a nuance in a salutation by some surrendering general, spoke immediately of old half-forgotten history, or of stories from which helpful and terrible analogies could be drawn.

On one matter only was he resolutely silent, and the man had, after all every right to mourn his brother without placing his grief on display for the men who had conquered his empire. It made no matter, but Hephaistion—trained to stern awareness of all his conflicting impulses since thirteen—knew himself cursedly curious to know more about the Great King Alexander had succeeded, and it nagged at him to let Oxathres alone. They knew of course, that he had once been personally valiant, that he was a mediocre general and an atrocious administrator, but of Darius the man—since he could not ask Queen Sisygambis about the son she no longer acknowledged—only his brother could vouchsafe anything. It was impossible to ask his lover’s beloved to tell stories of his last lover, especially when the boy still flinched out of sight every time they met, busying himself in a bid at invisibility when escape proved impossible.  It would be cruel to unsettle him to satisfy idle curiosity; he would only deliver a tastefully-edited version of the truth, affecting to show Darius in the best light while also exposing him as leagues beneath Alexander. Al’skandar, the boy said, my Lord Al’skandar, tripping prettily off his tongue. It made no matter—the empire depended on much knowledge, but a general’s of his king’s predecessor would never be counted critical.

And then it did, or on his knowledge of the man who had been lover to two kings and still, and still, thought it correct for a king to assassinate a friend for comparing him to his own famed father. For a peasant grubbing in his Persian fields to think his King above all human restrictions was understandable—in Macedon, were he free, even the peasant could have spoken of his injustices to the king, and the king, whether he chose to alter his life, would have had to listen to even that least of his subjects—but it seemed impossible that a boy brought up at court, living skin to sighing skin with the Great King could think the same. And to this boy he had to leave Alexander, and trust that he would be kept safe and sane and convinced that he bled red blood and that sorrow for a beloved friend shamed him not at all. Already—always—he was too inclined to disappear behind the mask, become hero, king, Achilles, Son of Ammon, Great King, inviolate and inhuman, and to keep him simply  golden Alexander whose hands grasped so greedily at the unknown had been the work of too many years to let Persian hands daintily unpick his many patched-over attempts at field-surgery.

Two mornings running he had found the boy lingering outside Alexander’s door and brushed him impatiently away, shutting ears to his tumbling words, and trying desperately to judge how foolish it would be to let him tend his Lord. Somebody had to prevent Alexander from fretting himself into a collapse, and he had himself too little time, and less chance of spending days by Alexander’s bed before allegations rose, of currying favour, or even of attempting harm to the royal person.

On the third morning—Bagoas had talked his way already into the chambers, but it was impossible to anger at that when Alexander had finally eaten, spoken, demanded comfort—he found himself asking, as he had wanted for many years, “What was Darius like?”

The boy looked away, swallowing something beyond quick humiliation, and clenched and unclenched his fists before looking up. Eyes to drown in and strangely lovelier now with the mind — shrewd and assessing— shining through than in all the pleading gone before: eyes to see in court or shining above a blade. “He was kind, when pleased. He liked perfection in his belongings,” his voice dipped in recital, “the perfect vase and the polished gem.”

There were things he did for Alexander—tortured a friend to death’s door and back to hear a truth everyone knew; found him kings to enthrone; argued with engineers for hours and days to try and take Tyre; held him by the wrist as he dared death to ravage Victory’s wreath. Always that last, and he thought it always wonderful that their lives had been so early foretold. With Oxathres he would have felt obligated to trade story for story, but he had never been quite that sort of little boy, even for Alexander, and it would be obscene, in any case, to gloat. He said instead, as though he owed honesty to the slim boy standing straight-backed against the gilded wall, head tilted to look challengingly at him, “In Macedon we choose our King, from the royal clan. Alexander’s father was the younger brother of the old king, he was just Regent at first, but the lords loved him enough, thought him a good enough general, a good enough ruler, that he was made King. And his nephew, who had lived his whole life thinking he’d come to the throne, he swore allegiance to Philip just the same. It doesn’t mean the same to us, to have a King. He’s still Alexander, first.” And that was clumsy enough it made him feel a boy again, holding his tongue in Aristotle’s classes. “He isn’t perfect because he’s Great King; if he thought he were it would render him less a Macedonian.”

The boy frowned at that—and he could see the guards sliding eyes over to them, nearly trembling in anticipation—and said, slow, sounding the words out, as to a simple child, “But he _is_ Great King.”

Again this. Hephaistion wondered whether the near-frantic insistence was all that had made him able to live with Darius—he is the Great King, and so I must not show my revulsion, and so I must pretend desire, and so I must smile though all I want is to run away—but that made no matter, now. “Alexander,” he said, “likes perfection, too, but he is himself the, ha, the perfect vase and the polished gem. His whole life he’s wanted that. But he wants, also, to be loved. And there is nobody worthier of love than a man striving forever to attain perfection—even when they hate him, they know that, and in those who love him it lights an answering spark in us, so we strive, too, to be worthy of his love.” Bagoas dipped heavy lashes over a smile. He had said, as he always said when speaking of Alexander, too much and too bluntly, but he did need the boy to know, to begin at least to grasp how differently they felt about their shared King. “If he thought himself above all guilt, he would only drive himself to death—it is only that he bleeds red that has him held on this earth, it is only that he is allowed his follies and he has friends who laugh at him. Without that, who can tell what he might do, what he might become.”

“And yet you prostrated yourself to him.” Oh, but he shone, and the famous eyes were great and glittering. If only one could turn him loose in Athens, in Olympias’ court. Philip would laugh, not unkindly, and that felt a travesty. But, ah, to watch him watch Queen Olympias with those eyes.

“It is a ritual of salutation like any other,” he said, “and if it is unsavoury...” He could not chop logic with the boy, nor share the laughing story of how impossible it had seemed to kneel to Alexander with other eyes watching. “I swore I would always ride to war with him. I would follow him to the ends of this earth, and it is simple enough to see that if the realms are to be united we cannot scorn all Persian customs. But I do it because he is Alexander before he is my King, and the men do it because he is their golden General before he is anything else.” Because, he thought of saying, he was ours first, he was mine first and you cannot wrench him from me while I live, I’ve had him too long and I’ve loved him too well, and I saw him first, as pathetic as a child stamping her foot when her mother ran to a younger child. From the way the eyes slanted a look at him, he thought he might as well have.

“Why are you telling me this?” It had not made a dent in the boy’s armour; next time, he would know better.

“Ah that.” He offered up his father’s best smile, the one that had made ensigns weep and his brothers-in-law find it always a good day for hunting. “We’re heading to Bactria the moment we can sort out logistics. Ptolemy’s decided to distract Alexander with war. And it will let the army welcome him back into their grasping arms.”


End file.
